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Operationalizing Customer Experience Insights: Today´s CX Dilemma

Posted: May 24, 2021
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#CX Program Management #Customer Journey Mapping
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For almost a decade, the challenge was to get businesses to understand the importance of developing a Customer-Centric culture. Very often, companies are product-oriented, versus being customer oriented. It is hard to catch the importance of being Customer-Centric, because it is hard to prove ROI for, plus the shift to becoming such a company can last a long time because it is based on continuous improvement.

Today, the dilemma has shifted: the battle is now to get businesses to operationalize the insights that were driven from their CX efforts. It is safe to say that putting customer obsession into action is no easy task. If you tell your employees in the weekly morning meeting that it is important to be proactive with the customers, but do not have in place the right channels to implement it, it is quite a difficult task.

Cemantica´s VoC technology partner Medallia, put it so well to “wire customers into every decision”, to ensure aligned decision-making that is relevant to the market (and meets its challenges) throughout your operating model.

So the question is: Where to start? What should come first? Who should lead?

“A misalignment between company goals and a customer-obsessed operating model will take you backward, not forward.”

Forrester, 2020

Aligning company objectives, values and vision for a customer-centric strategy

Fortunately, or perhaps unfortunately, customer obsession starts with you, the CEO. Don’t expect any progress if you and your executive team don’t commit heart and soul. Obsession is an emotional state, and the emotion of an organization flows from leadership.

Once you have understood and adopted the fact that customer obsession needs to align with company goals, you need to take it one step further: operationalizing CX. Values must dictate day to day decisions.

As Nielsen Norman Group put it in their report "Operationalizing CX: Organizational Strategies for Delivering Superior Omnichannel Experiences", “this discipline cannot simply be stacked upon a company’s existing infrastructure, strategy, and internal practices. For CX work to thrive at scale, beyond one-off initiatives, companies must develop a supporting operational ecosystem that allows for quick reaction to customer needs. Creating this ecosystem requires organizations to transform their internal operations to resolve challenges that legacy business practices impose on CX-related business goals.”

It is not sufficient to sip coffee in the morning in the office kitchen with your peers and discuss the latest CX trends, but then move on with your daily tasks as if it weren’t related. Because it really is, and this is what we are going to look at here.

Let’s take for example McDonalds – we all know that they are big on FAST food, Drive-in burgers and fries. Now, your customer expectations when going to McDonalds, are not that you are going to have a healthy meal with fresh produce, but it doesn’t matter – because you’re here to eat on the go and get it fast. So what happens if McDonalds builds on the value of FAST but takes an average of 15 min to prepare your order? Expectations go right out of the door – because if you do not align company goals, with values and more specifically operational processes then it leads to a failed CX, and inevitably – a disappointed customer.

Point being – the vision must start with the leaders, then pushed across the entire organization until delivery and to push it even one step further: until the advocacy stage. In other words, it’s time to breakdown the silos and communicate one message.

But it does not end here. This is unfortunately, (or fortunately for the more advanced) one stone in the edifice.

You need to define what your CX strategy is, in order to define values and to know exactly what you need to operationalize. To sum it up, let’s reflect in the form of a quote:

“Eight years into the age of the customer, just 15% of enterprises are customer-obsessed. Our research finds that executives agree with the idea… they just struggle to put it into practice.” Forrester, 2020.

What are the pain points of operationalizing Customer Experience?

We know that a company must embed customer-centric best practices into its business structure, products or services and operations and move away from traditional and legacy approaches. But what are the challenges that an organization must overcome?

  • Senior management lack data and technology to support smart decision-making when forming a Customer Experience strategy
  • Organizational misalignment of the importance (and indeed appreciation) of a customer-centric business, right down to teams and each employee who do not understand their role and impact
  • Even if a company has a CX function, it can often be siloed outside of senior management and operations, lessening the impact of a customer experience-led approach

Steps to operationalize Customer Experience

Nielsen Norman Group describe a foundational framework where they discuss four key focus areas that a business must address as top priorities in order to operationalize CX at scale:

  1. Company’s vision and strategy
  2. Employees
  3. Operations
  4. Technology

An inspiring vision must be telling to both customers and employees. After which you must ensure that your processes are aligned with that vision, and that you empower your teams to deliver on your promise with the right data, digital technology and insights to keep evolving and transforming the customer journey.

Customer obsession starts with the CEO

So if we put aside the new challenge of successfully developing and putting into action customer centricity in every effort of the company – let’s look at what we believe should be the operational mode.

It starts by BELIEVING. In order for a company to act upon measures, they need to believe. But this belief must come from somewhere... it will usually come from a culture. And who creates and maintains this culture? Yes, you’ve guessed it.. the CEO, the leaders...

In this case, we are talking about customer-centricity, customer OBESESSION. 

As CEO, to achieve success, you have to clearly articulate the reasons to pursue obsession, but also, and more importantly – link obsession to company goals.

In short, before diving into a long and complicated process you need to start at the top and ask yourself this question: What does it truly mean to be a Customer Centric Organization? What is your plan and how will you deliver?

This process does not and SHOULD not be done alone, providing a backbone and technological support in organizational changes is key and should start with comprehending the existing journey of your customers.

A Customer Experience management platform that brings together a Journey Mapping tool, a CX Program and the VoC integrated into the platform, centralizes ALL the key parts in order to operationalize CX insights at scale.

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